Author Topic: A call to protect society’s common wealth from privatization and neglect  (Read 2778 times)

Joe Carillo

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In a posthumously published book, Our Common Wealth: The Hidden Economy That Makes Everything Else Work (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 144 pages), the late American economics-politics writer and editor Jonathan Rowe (1946-2011) makes a brilliant meditation on the shared, non-commercialized realms of life that sustain human society. Collectively known as “the commons,” these realms consist of such gifts of nature as the air and oceans, the web of species, wilderness, and watersheds as well as such products of human creativity and endeavor as sidewalks and public spaces, the Internet, our languages, cultures, and technologies.


Our Common Wealth puts together Rowe’s deep insights on such topics as the myopia of money and the perils of commercialism to the importance of alleys and the pleasure of neighborhood hangouts. The book marshals these insights into a powerful manifesto calling for new social institutions that can create a durable balance between the commons and the profit-seeking side of the economy.

“The value of the commons is beyond reckoning,” Rowe argues in the book. “Before we can protect it, though, we have to see it, and that is no small task. When we breathe the air or banter with neighbors on the sidewalk, it rarely occurs to us that we are using a commons. A commons has a quality of just being there. People don’t need a contract to breathe or an insurance policy to call a neighbor for help… (But) seeing the commons is only a first step; the ultimate challenge is to protect it. The solution is not to create new government agencies or programs. Rather, it is to create rules, boundaries, and property rights to protect common wealth, just as we do for private wealth. This is a crucial point.”

Says James Fallows, national correspondent of The Atlantic, about Rowe’s Our Common Wealth: “This elegant book is a wonderful introduction to the originality of thought, clarity of expression, and humanity of vision that made Jonathan Rowe so respected by those who knew him. It will change the way you think about economic, environmental and social problems and how to solve them.”

Read Timothy Noah’s “The Glory of The Commons,” a review of Jonathan Rowe’s Our Common Wealth, in the WashingtonMonthly.com Magazine now!

Read the first chapter of Jonathan Rowe’s Our Common Wealth in the OnTheCommons.org Magazine now!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jonathan Rowe, an editor at the Washington Monthly magazine and a staff writer at the Christian Science Monitor, wrote about the commons, diseconomy, economics, economic indicators, corporations, and many other subjects. He contributed to Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Reader’s Digest, Washington Post, Columbia Journalism Review, and American Prospect. He was a co-founder of the organization On The Commons, which promotes commons-based solutions to problems.

OTHER INTERESTING READINGS:

More like highway robbery. In “Diagnosis: Insufficient Outrage,” an op-ed article that came out in the July 4, 2013 issue of The New York Times, Dr. H. Gilbert Welch, a professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, bewails what he considers the violation of an ethical standard by health care-providers in the United States. “Medical care is intended to help people, not enrich providers,” he argues. “But the way prices are rising, it’s beginning to look less like help than like highway robbery. And the providers — hospitals, doctors, universities, pharmaceutical companies and device manufactures — are the ones benefiting… Too many of us have passively accepted the situation as being beyond our control. Medical care in America could use a dose of moral outrage. It would be best for all if it was self-administered.”

Read Dr. H. Gilbert Welch’s “Diagnosis: Insufficient Outrage” in The New York Times now!

Sticker shock for maternity care. In “American Way of Birth, Costliest in the World,” an article in the June 30, 2013 issue of The New York Times, reporter Elizabeth Rosenthal has put together the experiences of several women encountering the highly prohibitive cost of pregnancy and maternity care in the United States today. One pregnant woman had to sort through an array of maternity services that most often have no clear price and — with no insurer to haggle on their behalf — just had to try to negotiate discounts from hospitals and doctors. Ultimately, like many other pregnant women, she got a sticker shock—a range of $4,000 to $45,000 for maternity care—in a country where charges for delivery have about tripled since 1996.

Read Elizabeth Rosenthal’s “American Way of Birth, Costliest in the World” in The New York Times now!
« Last Edit: July 17, 2013, 07:35:12 AM by Joe Carillo »